PARIS, October, 1805.
MY LORD:--The short journey of Count von Haugwitz to Vienna, and the long
stay of our Imperial Grand Marshal, Duroc, at Berlin, had already caused
here many speculations, not quite corresponding with the views and,
perhaps, interests of our Court, when our violation of the Prussian
territory made our courtiers exclaim: “This act proves that the Emperor
of the French is in a situation to bid defiance to all the world, and,
therefore, no longer courts the neutrality of a Prince whose power is
merely artificial; who has indemnities to restore, but no delicacy, no
regard to claims.” Such was the language of those very men who, a month
before, declared “that His Prussian Majesty held the balance of peace or
war in his hands; that he was in a position in which no Prussian Monarch
ever was before; that while his neutrality preserved the tranquillity of
the North of Germany, the South of Europe would soon be indebted to his
powerful mediation for the return of peace.”
The real cause of this alteration in our courtiers’ political jargon has
not yet been known; but I think it may easily be discovered without any
official publication. Bonaparte had the adroitness to cajole the Cabinet
of Berlin into his interest, in the first month of his consulate,
notwithstanding his own critical situation, as well as the critical
situation of France; and he has ever since taken care both to attach it
to his triumphal car and to inculpate it indirectly in his outrages and
violations. Convinced, as he thought, of the selfishness which guided
all its resolutions, all his attacks and invasions against the law of
nations, or independence of States, were either preceded or followed with
some offers of aggrandizement, of indemnity, of subsidy, or of alliance.
His political intriguers were generally more successful in Prussia than
his military heroes in crossing the Rhine or the Elbe, in laying the
Hanse Towns under contribution, or in occupying Hanover; or, rather, all
these acts of violence and injustice were merely the effects of his
ascendency in Prussia. When it is, besides, remembered what provinces
Prussia accepted from his bounty, what exchange of presents, of ribands,
of private letters passed between Napoleon the First and Frederick
William III., between the Empress of the French and the Queen of Prussia,
it is not surprising if the Cabinet of St. Cloud thought itself sure of
the submission of the Cabinet of Berlin, and did not esteem it enough to
fear it, or to think that it would have spirit enough to resent, or even
honour to feel, the numerous Provocations offered.
Whatever Bonaparte and Talleyrand write or assert to the contrary, their
gifts are only the wages of their contempt, and they despise more that
State they thus reward than those nations at whose expense they are
liberal, and with whose spoil they delude selfishness or meanness into
their snares. The more legitimate Sovereigns descend from their true
dignity, and a liberal policy, the nearer they approach the baseness of
usurpation and the Machiavellism of rebellion. Like other upstarts, they
never suffer an equal. If you do not keep yourself above them, they will
crush you beneath them. If they have no reason to fear you, they will
create some quarrel to destroy you.
It is said here that Duroc’s journey to Berlin was merely to demand a
passage for the French troops through the Prussian territory in
Franconia, and to prevent the Russian troops from passing through the
Prussian territory in Poland. This request is such as might have been
expected from our Emperor and his Minister. Whether, however, the tone
in which this curious negotiation with a neutral power was begun, or
that, at last, the generosity of the Russian Monarch awakened a sense of
duty in the Cabinet of Berlin, the arrival of our pacific envoy was
immediately followed with warlike preparations. Fortunate, indeed, was
it for Prussia to have resorted to her military strength instead of
trusting any longer to our friendly assurances. The disasters that have
since befallen the Austrian armies in Suabia, partly occasioned by our
forced marches through neutral Prussia, would otherwise soon have been
felt in Westphalia, in Brandenburgh, and in Pomerania. But should His
Prussian Majesty not order his troops to act in conjunction with Russia,
Austria, England, and Sweden, and that very soon, all efforts against
Bonaparte will be vain, as those troops which have dispersed the
Austrians and repulsed the Russians will be more than equal to master the
Prussians, and one campaign may be sufficient to convince the Prussian
Ministers of their folly and errors for years, and to punish them for
their ignorance or selfishness.
Some preparations made in silence by the Marquis of Lucchesini, his
affected absence from some of our late Court circles, and the number of
spies who now are watching his hotel and his steps, seem to indicate that
Prussia is tired of its impolitic neutrality, and inclined to join the
confederacy against France. At the last assembly at our Prince
Cambaceres’s, a rumour circulated that preliminary articles for an
offensive alliance with your country had already been signed by the
Prussian Minister, Baron Von Hardenberg, on one side, and by your
Minister to the Court of Berlin on the other; according to which you were
to take sixty thousand Prussians and twelve thousand Hessians into your
pay, for five years certain. A courier from Duroc was said to have
brought this news, which at first made some impression, but it wore away
by degrees; and our Government, to judge from the expressions of persons
in its confidence, seems more to court than to fear a rupture with
Prussia. Indeed, besides all other reasons to carry on a war in the
North of Europe, Bonaparte’s numerous and young generals are impatient to
enrich themselves, as Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the South of
Germany are almost exhausted.